


The Proof in Blood

by machinewithoutfeelings



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Children, Gen, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-04
Updated: 2017-01-22
Packaged: 2018-05-24 16:54:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6160261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/machinewithoutfeelings/pseuds/machinewithoutfeelings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ash has a question for her Master. [AU of "The Proof of It All", diverging from Chapter Five.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. and this child i would destroy

**Author's Note:**

> So, I began writing this just as an exercise and it became something else, something totally self-indulgent. It's not happy, that's a warning beforehand. If you take a look at the chapter it breaks off from, that kind of tells you what you need to know.

 

Ash's days were almost all the same, especially since her Master had been out on a mission.

 

She woke up at 0600; she wasn't permitted to sleep any further. There wasn't technically anyone watching her as of late, but Ash knew that he would know. She was used to it anyway. She would take a hot shower, plait her long black hair, then put on her training clothes. She would eat breakfast at 0630, but droids always brought it to her room. Ash never ate in common areas- she knew it would displease Master Ren. Ash was not supposed to socialize with the Knights- they were much older, and he feared they would make a pet of her. "I don't want anyone making you soft," her Master would say.

 

He had been gone for almost three weeks now, though, and Ash knew that she had to keep herself busy. She practiced and she studied and she trained- he would be quite angry if any of her skills slipped, and he was most frightening when he was angry. Sparring against a droid wasn't the same as sparring against a real person, though, and Ash wished that her Master would come back. Her eleventh birthday was rapidly approaching, and it was then Ash had become resolved to ask him her question.

 

She had been wondering on it for a while, but she didn't dare ask unless she was close to sure. The smallest thing tended to set her him off, and if she was wrong- not only would be embarrassed, he would probably make her pay for it. He would probably still be angry, Ash reasoned, but it would be worth it if she could get a real answer, just this once.

 

She awoke on her actual birthday before her alarm even went off. Her automatic lights were not on yet, and Ash sat up in her bed in the dark, trying imagine how to conversation would go. She had to phrase everything exactly right. If she got everything right, maybe he would concede to answer instead of just getting upset and making her train until she dropped from exhaustion. Or even worse, locking her in her room. He had done that before.

 

He never hurt, her, though. Ash figured it was because she was so small, though she wasn't sure. She saw him lose his temper with other people, saw the way he might choke people or throw them against the wall. He kept his lightsaber at his side, a constant threat to those who might upset him. Ash had seen him cut down more than one person with that unsteady red glow. She _ached_ for a lightsaber of her own, but she knew that she was too young.

 

Maybe, now that she was eleven. That could be second on the list of things to talk about.

 

Master Ren always spoke of wanting to make her strong, wanting to extinguish any weaknesses in her, yet he wasn't exactly teaching Ash the skills she thought she needed yet. She could fight, of course.She was deeply knowledgable of the history and teachings of the dark side. Yet, when it came to the actual skills that would help her slay their enemies in battle, Ash found herself deeply lacking. He thought her still a small child.

 

She was eating her breakfast when she felt him arrive, and Ash began to shovel food into her mouth at triple the speed. She had just _known_ that he would come back today, somehow, and by the time her door opened, her plate was clear. Ash jumped up from her seat at the small table and wiped at her mouth with the back of her hand.

 

The sight of the mask was comforting.

 

“You should take me with you next time,” Ash said in greeting. “I can hold a blaster, you know.”

 

He stared at her for a moment; Ash had become adept at reading emotions without a face. It was his body movement, the tilt of his head. Master Ren was in a decent mood- _excellent_ \- and with a swish of his robes and a beckoning move of his arm, he exited the room and Ash followed.

 

“Or if you don't want to give me a blaster, we could always train with _another weapon_.” Ash had held her Master's lightsaber a scant few times, but she felt honored that he ever let her. It was never spoken aloud, her special status, but certainly none of the Knights were allowed to practice with Master Ren's weapon. He did not spend days training them in the ways of the Force. His particular interest in training Ash had soured more than one of the Knights of Ren; she knew this for a fact. Most of them were smart enough to keep this jealousy to themselves, but Ash had a particular memory of Loran Ren, a former Knight, who had dared to voice his displeasure within earshot of Ash and her Master. She had not been more than six. They had been passing a room where the Knights congregated, and Loran Ren's indignant, slurred voice was easily heard from the hallway.

 

"-too centered on the little cunt; if something happened he could always find another bitch to whelp one-"

 

The knight was up against the wall before he even finished his thought. Master Ren had him pinned against the stone and stalked toward him with menace, never letting his grasp falter, Ash close at his heels. It was the first time she had seen the true breadth of what her master's powers could do, and Ash found it captivating. She watched as Loran Ren struggled, stupidly tried to wrestle from a grip they all knew wasn't physically there. She watched his eyes bulge and his skin turn an unrecognizable color and his kicks grow weaker and more pathetic.

 

When he fell to the floor, Ash had felt an unexplicable surge of joy and pride. Her Master had done that in defense of her, she knew, even though she didn't understand exactly what had happened. Moreover, she was proud that her Master was that powerful, and someday she would be, too. It didn't frighten her to see a dead man. Someday, she would see many. She would strike men down herself for the glory of the Supreme Leader. For the glory of Master Ren.

 

Today, however, she could not even get a hit in on her Master. Ash tried to breath, tried to resist the urge to throw her practice saber across the room the tenth time Master Ren was able to knock her to the ground. _Not today, you will be good today, everything has to go right today, you have to be perfect today._

 

Master Ren stood above Ash as she picked herself up off the ground. Ash knew that she was fairly tall, though she did not know any other girls her age for comparison, but her Master still towered over her in a way that made her feel like a small child. She tried to clear the scowl she wore at being defeated.

 

"You will get there,” her Master said. “I am a grown man and you are eleven. You are far past where I was at that age."

 

Ash glowed, not just at the compliment, but also at the mention of her age. She knew it wasn't an accident- it was his subtle way of acknowledging that he remembered it was her birthday, and she was grateful for it.

 

"Only due to your teaching, Master Ren." Now, despite her failure in combat, Ash could hardly keep from grinning ear to ear.

 

"Okay, enough of that.” Master Ren often found her too flattering, too cheeky. “Go wash and study. I will be joining you for your meal tonight."

 

Ash hurried back to her quarters and took the fastest shower possible. She brushed out her hair and decided to let it air dry while she did her lessons, laying on her belly in bed with a datapad in her hands. She did her history first, as it was her favorite. It was hard to keep her mind from wandering, though, even with her favorite subject. She took to meditation after a while, just to calm herself.

 

He was unmasked when he came to her- of course he would be, to eat. Still, it had been some time since she had seen his face. She was grateful for it, because she studied every feature and it made her feel more confident.

 

“May I ask a question, Master Ren?” Ash folded and unfolded her napkin in her lap. She had hardly touched her food, even though it was mostly all of her favorite things. Her stomach was feeling too jumbled with nerves. He seemed in a good enough mood- she had done everything perfectly, perfectly all day just to ensure that he would be pleased with her when the time came.

 

“Are you my father?” There was no particular need for any messy preamble- it would probably just come out stuttering and rambling. It was best to be direct with Master Ren.

 

His utensil stilled in the air, and Ash held her breath.

 

“Explain why you are asking.”

 

Ash's list of evidence flittered through her mind, all of the tangible proof- her ears, her nose, the particular way he had of interacting with her, the things she had overheard people mumble- and then she used none of it. Instead, Ash felt something like a wave of knives rise up in her chest, and she turned to the side so he couldn't see her as her eyes welled up with tears. _You were going to control yourself_ , Ash admonished in her head. _You were going to be calm and rational._

 

“I feel something,” she finally said. “I feel it through the Force.”

 

And it was true, though she had not recognized it until that very moment. She did not need her Master to answer her question anymore.

 

“You are,” she said, raising her head and blinking back the tears. “I know it. Why have you never told me?”

 

“I did not think the details of your conception had any relevance,” he said. “How does this detail change our relationship? You are still my student and I am still your teacher. That is all you need to see me as. Anything else is a weakness.” No one else would probably hear the subtle change in his voice now, but Ash had spent most the days of her life with only this man to speak to. She heard the faintest crack, a rare softening. “If I was to treat you as my- as my daughter, that would not serve you in any way. If you were to see me as your father, that would only be a poison to you. You might cultivate dangeous compassion towards me. I need you to have a hard heart. There is no room for... love.”

 

He was right. Ash didn't feel foolish for asking, though. It was something she needed to know. “I can put it behind me now,” she promised. “I just wanted to know.” She tried to ignore the way her heart beat heavy with pride, heavy with the blood of her Master, she now knew. Heavy with the blood, Ash realized, of the great Sith Darth Vader. Familial relations may make one weak, but the promise of her now confirmed bloodline made her feel powerful.

 

“Good,” he said. “Once attachments like that are made- they are very hard to break. I did not want that for you.”

 

“Of course, Master.”

 

They finished the rest of the meal in silence, and though thoroughly satisfied, Ash's mind could not keep from rapidly forming ten other questions to replace the one. _Put it behind you now,_ Ash told herself, though her brain quickly reformed that thought to ' _put it behind you for now_ '. Her other questions could wait. She enjoyed the quiet peace they sat and ate in, and besides, she wasn't particularly sure how much she wanted answers to her other questions, at least the foremost one. The one she was now trying to repress the most, because she doubted any joy would come of the answer.

 

_If you are my father, then where is my mother?_

 

 

 


	2. if you tried to set her free

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, it's been a while. But I have this, and it only needed a little polishing. It felt like a shame to never update it.
> 
> I want to give a HEARTFELT thanks to both [cracktheglasses](http://cracktheglasses.tumblr.com/) and [southsidestory](http://southsidestory.tumblr.com/) for the support, encouragement and amazingly insightful comments on this. Would not be posting this without you. At all.
> 
> If the first chapter depressed you, be prepared.

When she woke, Ash's hair was sticky with blood. It wasn't her own.

An old woman was looking at her. Ash tried to jerk away, and realized her arms were bound to the chair. She shook them, but they were tied tight. Ash took in the rest of the room. It was a small, brightly lit office. Two other people flanked the back of the room- _Resistance scum-_ and Ash knew she had gotten herself captured.

_Stupid, stupid!_ “Stay close,” her Master had told her. He had been so reluctant to bring her with him, but it was supposed to be an easy mission; they were not supposed to have been swarmed by Resistance. Ash tried to recall exactly what had happened, but it felt like her brain was fighting against her. It hurt, almost, and she felt tears like pinpricks in the sides of her eyes, but refused to let them fall.

_You are not weak. Remember who you are._

“My name is Leia,” the woman said, but she was not Leia, Ash knew her face. She was, but that was not _who she was._ It was General Organa.

“I'm your grandmother,” the General said. “I don't want to hurt you.”

“You're a liar!” Ash screamed. “Where is Master Ren?”

They were all quiet. The General looked at the others, and Ash jerked her head back to look at them. All of their faces were blank. They probably did not know where he was. He would know where she was, though. That was what this was. They were frightened, as they should be. She had seen his power when someone had simply made an offhand comment about her- what would he do to those who had stolen her from him?

The General turned back to her, though. She looked down, then back at Ash, then away to the side. Her face was drawn, and she closed her eyes when she spoke again.

“Kylo Ren is dead.”

A second passed in silence.

The tears Ash had kept so well restrained broke through. “You're lying,” she said, through choked, undignified sobs. Her nose was running over her lip, her eyes stinging. “You're all liars! My master is going to kill all of you when he comes to get me here!” Her master would. No matter how harsh a teacher, he always came for her, always kept her safe. She looked forward to watching him sweep through the crowd of Resistance fighters surrounding her with his saber, until they were just piles of smoking bodies.

“Ash,” Leia said, and she _put her hand on her_. Ash could see that her eyes were red, her face etched with something that looked like pain. “We're not lying to you, I'm sorry. I am more sorry than you can understand.”

“ _My father could never die at the hands of scum like you!”_ Leia was slammed back into the wall, obviously not expecting Ash's grief-maddened rage and use of the Force. One Resistance guard ran to Leia, who was already picking herself up and waving him away. Another had instantly pointed his blaster at Ash, eyeing her down as a dangerous threat.

“Put that down!” Leia shouted when she saw him. “She's a child!”

“A child who could kill us all, ma'am,” the guard said, but he lowered his weapon. “She killed two people already with Kylo Ren's lightsaber.”

They were liars, liars, but Ash reached out for him and felt nothing but a dull pain eating away at the side her mind. She screamed, screamed and kicked her legs and tried to yank her arms out of her bindings. Where was he, _where was he?_ Ash couldn't breathe. Her lungs burned. Her heart felt scraped empty.

“She's going to hurt herself,” she heard General Organa say. “Sedate her, please. For her own safety.”

Ash thrashed even more at this; she tried to bite the young man who came at her with a needle. Another one held her down, though, and Ash had barely felt the prick in her arm before she felt the room get hazy, and far away, and dark.

  


When she woke, she was in the same room. She was still bound to the chair. The General was gone, and there was only one guard.

One guard. What was wrong with them?

Ash's throat felt raw, and she remembered the screaming. What had happened. No, the lies they had told her about what happened.

“Hey,” she said, and he jumped and stared at her when he realized that she was awake and speaking to him. He looked at her with wide eyes, as if her consciousness puzzled him. There was something written on his face that Ash could not read- she wished that she could dive down into his mind and fetch whatever thought it was that flitted across his face when their eyes met.

_“You have to teach me! You have to!”_

_“I do not **have** to do anything. You're not the one who gives the orders around here.”_

_“I- I'm sorry, Master. Yes. But...do you think you will teach me?”_

_“Of course. Someday you will be a master of all I know and more. But not yet. Delving into the mind of another person can be very dangerous...”_

“I'm very thirsty,” Ash said, and the hoarseness of her voice confirmed as much. “Could you get me some water? And untie me?”

He stared at her for a moment more before turning to a small conservator in the corner of the room. He pulled out a bottle of water, and set it on the table in front of her. “I was told not to untie you,” he said, and then a moment later he was doing exactly that. “I was told that you would flip out and try to kill me.”

_I might,_ Ash thought, and she rubbed at her sore wrists.

He had not moved from beside the table, and she looked up. He looked as if he wanted to speak, but did not know what to say. Ash didn't want to hear any of it, no matter what it was. More deception. She opened her water and took a sip- it was so cold it almost hurt going down, but Ash drained half the bottle in a matter of seconds.

“My name is Finn,” the man said finally, as she set the bottle back down on the table.

“Okay.”

“I knew your mother,” he continued. “She loved you so much, even when you were just inside of her.”

Ash refused to look at him. It took a very large amount of self control to do so, to not open her mouth and let spill out all of the questions that had immediately formed when he said that. Instead, she let her head hang as she sat in the chair silently. She ran her hand through her loose and knotted hair, examined the blood as she pressed it against the pads of her fingertips. He continued speaking.

“He killed her, you know,” Finn said. “Your father. He murdered your mother.”

How _dare_ he.

“She must have deserved it,” Ash said, now looking up to meet his eyes, the words spit out like a bad taste.

Finn looked physically wounded by her words. “He was a monster. What a complete monster. I can barely stand to look and see what he has done to you.” He looked at Ash like she were an unreal thing, some macabre version of someone he once cared for, deeply.

“You loved her. My mother.” She looked down again, not wanting to be subjected to his gaze any longer.

“Everyone loved her,” Finn said, in a lower voice. She could hear his mourning clearly, and for a moment she shared in it. Wanted to know this woman, just a little. She did not show it, though- did not look up when he continued speaking. “Who knows, maybe even he did. Some gross, twisted, poisonous version of love.”

_I need you to have a hard heart._

“He didn't love _anyone_.” Ash felt a burning pain in her stomach, like it was trying to dissolve itself from inside out. _Everything_ hurt, her back, her arms, her neck, her stomach and lungs and heart and esophagus; it all felt like it had been kicked to death and flipped inside out. The pain became unbearable every time she thought about her master. The feeling that he was still coming back for her refused to die. She could almost see him bursting through, slaughtering this man, picking her up like she was still little and carrying her back to his shuttle.

She wanted to be back in her room, wanted to take a shower, wash this blood from her hair – _his blood, his blood._ She would never ask to be taken out on a mission with him again, she would stay home, stay in her room, study every day, practice without whining for a break or asking too many intrusive questions, if he would just come back. Come back and take her home, please. _Come back, Master, please._

  


It was humiliating. No one seemed to know how to treat her- they acted as if Ash was something halfway between a war criminal and a refugee.

They cut off her hair. It was too disgusting and matted from all of the blood and dirt in it. Ash could not remember having short hair, ever, and it made her feel naked. The clothes they picked were strange, unfamiliar bright colors and patterns. She preferred her old clothes- they were uniform, comfortable, something she never had to think about. They kept her in a room, guarded by at least two people at all times, though it was fairly unnecessary. She had nowhere to go. If she tried to run, she would be surrounded in minutes. She couldn't fly a ship, had no way to get off this planet.

All she could do was wait.

They didn't treat her exactly like a prisoner- she had good meals, a comfortable place to sleep. They tried to give her things to amuse her. Toys she had no clue what to do with, holovids were a novelty, but she couldn't see the point in them. Books- the books they gave her were strange. Most were fiction, but a few were non-fiction, histories- at least they purported them as such. These 'histories' were full of so many laughable inaccuracies that she spent one afternoon just scrolling through and highlighting every Republic lie she found. Maybe her Master would find them amusing when he finally came for her.

  


 

The base housing was spread across a massive lake, little dwellings built on stilts and all connected by long walkways of wood over the water. It was hideously impractical, Ash thought, but she liked walking the length of it, throwing rocks into the water or spying on fish through the slats. They let her go off by herself now, which Ash supposed meant that they trusted her not to kill anyone now. She had not decided if they were stupid for that or not.

She was doing this on a slightly chilly day, wishing that she had actually worn one of the stupid, ugly jackets she had been given, when Ash heard someone approaching, footsteps on the boards. They stopped right behind her.

“Am I a prisoner here?”

“You're my granddaughter,” Leia said, joining her against the wooden railings. “You're the only family I have left, besides my brother, and sometimes I think he might be even farther away than you are.”

They stood there in silence for a moment, staring out over the lake. Ash didn't enjoy being to close to Leia- she didn't like admitting that the presence of the Resistance general seemed to calm her, for some reason.

“What was my Master like as a child?” Ash asked, finally breaking their silence, skipping a stone across the water and then bringing it back to her to skip again. “When he was my age?”

“Sad,” Leia said, and her voice was tense, regretful. “He vacillated between being very quiet and closed off and lashing out emotionally. By the time he was twelve he was already in Jedi training with Luke- my brother- so I didn't see him often enough. It is difficult, now, looking back on it, because it seems so obvious the things I should have done that I didn't.” She turned to face Ash, who still kept her gaze stoic on the surface of the lake. Leia reached out and brushed black hair from in front of the girl's eyes, and Ash did not flinch at the touch. “What was he like when you were growing up?”

“Harsh,” Ash said. “Sad, too, I think, but I didn't really see it at the time. He took care of me, though. He pushed me hard to do my best, wouldn't let me slack or fail, but he wasn't stingy with compliments when I did something right. He always let me know, and it made me feel good.” She threw her rock extra hard, and it skipped farther than ever across the water, but this time Ash let it sink and stay there. “I was going to make him proud.”

She expected to hear some platitude of reassurance here, but her grandmother surprised her by saying nothing. Ash appreciated this- she preferred silence to empty words. They just stood near each other in the quiet of the rapidly approaching dusk, and Ash tried to ignore the push of warmth and familiarity she felt from her.

“You didn't know her, but even being raised by him, you seem more like your mother.” Ash finally turned to look at Leia at this. She didn't want to show how much interest she had in learning about her mother, and quickly turned away again, but her ears stayed attentive. “Rey was strong. Resilient. She grew up mostly alone, just like you.”

“I wasn’t alone,” Ash said, but her head felt like it was spinning with all the questions she had never been able to ask her master. Could she trust Leia with them? Not now, everything was too soon, but Ash knew she wouldn’t be able to keep a lid on her curiosity forever. Even if the answers were coated in a web of Resistance lies, maybe there was still some truth she could untangle from it. Something real at the core.

 _Rey._ Her name was Rey.


End file.
